LASH Documentation- May 21, 2012

Laura and Sam looking up books
on the CAT Database.

     Today the class went to the education section of the Paterno Library and we were set to find eight printed resources that were about lions, specifically mountain lions. Our group decided to first go to the computers and search the CAT Database, . On the advanced search we looked up the subject of "lions" under the material of "juvenile books". This search yielded many options but we saw two books that we were interested in trying to find. Hali wrote down the two identification numbers for these books and Audrey went to find them. She found the first one in the "Juvenile Fiction" section of the library, but the second had already been taken by another group. Upon returning to the group, they searched the subject of "lions" again, but this time under the material of "books". This gave an even bigger result list but we decided on one that seemed informative and fitting for our purpose. Upon searching for this one book, we found an entire grouping in "Juvenile Nonfiction" that included research-type books about lions. So we grabbed five that were under the subject of lions, mountain lions, and wild cats. Hali then had the idea to look for a book that gave instructions on how to draw lions. So we went to the "Instructional" section of the library and looked through the titles to try to find one that would apply. Hali found a puppet book that included pages explaining how to make a lion puppet, with an accompanying activity.

Audrey finding lion books on the shelves.

     
      While Hali and Audrey looked through "Juvenile Fiction" and "Juvenile Nonfiction," Sam and Laura tried to find books about lions and mountain lions in other sections of the library. They searched books, map, multimedia, newspapers, and many other, but had a lot of trouble finding something that seemed useful in a classroom. Eventually they searched in the juvenile books section to see if they could find anything that Hali and Audrey missed. They found one book that was released by ZooBooks about lions. Laura and Sam found a librarian to help them find the book. Once he taught them how to use the call number to find a book, they discovered that it had already been taken by another group. Luckily, Hali and Audrey had found enough resources already.

      The next part of the assignment was to narrow our books down to three that could be used in an elementary aged classroom setting, so our group took our books and sat at a table to determine which ones we would like to keep. We were at first overwhelmed because all of our books seemed very informative and useful in a classroom. We knew that we wanted to keep the picture book that we had grabbed "Christian, the hugging lion" because it was very appropriate for children and different from the other books we had. Then we decided to just take pictures of the puppet book pages that had to do with making the lion puppet so that we wouldn't have to hold onto the entire book.

Kris talking to our group about how to
narrow down our choices.

       After talking with Kris we decided to also keep a book that gave factual information about lions in a story format, a research type book with real pictures, and the picture book. The story formatted book was great because the children could look at the drawn pictures and the book could be read to the entire class. The research book was a good choice because even if the children were too young to read the information, the pictures would be a great learning tool. Another book that Kris took for the entire class was one on mountain lions, that included fictional stories and really great classroom activities. All of these books could be used in multiple age groups and for many different types of activities.

     After all of the groups picked out the books we returned to our classroom and discussed what we found out about the library and lions during our search. Then we thought of words that we would associate with lions from our prior knowledge and the research we had done today. Some of the words were furry, predators, majestic, and hungry. Then Kris had us act out some of the words that we had come up with, both individually and in our groups. When Kris called out "majestic", all of the groups got into poses and she chose one that she thought was very representative of the word. We then all added ourselves in some way to this original pose until everyone was involved. Afterwards we discussed how this process helped us to understand the word and how it enhanced our learning.

Four of the books we chose.